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cross-posted ---------------------------------------------------------- Author: GregM Topic: Hit Piece Redux-Gina Kolata and the Criticism of Science Reporting in the NY Times Posted: March 10, 2001 06:13 AM ---------------------------------------------------------- Well Folks, It seems that more than one person thinks the science writing of Gina Kolata at the New York Times is unreliable, not to say deliberately unobjective. My thread "NY Times Fails Test in..." is apparently not a new critism for Ms. Kolata. I was so flabbergasted by the bad science and the clear bias of the article,I decided to do a little investigative reportiong myself. Here is what I found: Mark Dowie in The Nation Jul 6 1998. What's Wrong With the New York Times's Science Reporting? BY MARK DOWIE ...As America evolved into a technological culture, science became an increasingly important beat. Times editors came to see the paper's scientific role as central to its purpose, as sound science became central to sound policy. Thus, over the past three decades, coverage of health, environment, medicine, biology, even physics and mathematics, has expanded exponentially in the Times's pages, where national giants of science writing--most notably Walter Sullivan, a Times legend who made science writing an art form--have made their mark. But there is a problem at the Times that needs to be corrected if the paper is to attain the same status in science as it has in foreign and domestic coverage. In science, even more than foreign or domestic political coverage, the paper tends to side with power--in this case corporate power. And much of the problem is centered around the work of one very talented and controversial science reporter, Gina Kolata... Her stories routinely stir controversy and influence public policy, and upon occasion have had huge commercial impact. Few are the science conferences, journals or Web sites where her name is not heard or seen. On more than one occasion she has been mentioned as heir to the mantle of Sullivan. So why are so many of her associates at the paper, including her admiring colleague, so upset with her? And why is she held in such low esteem by so many scientists?... Deconstruct her stories, source by source, quote by quote, and a familiar pattern begins to emerge. Upon re-interviewing the people she cites, it becomes evident that she appears to have decided before making her first call what her story will say. Her questions are suggestive, her tone combative. In the interest of the appearance of balance, sources of all persuasions are interviewed. But their quotes are carefully selected, at times modified to substantiate the predetermined position. Those scientists who disagree with her are either ignored, dismissed or trumped by someone anointed with higher authority--which usually means a longer string of initials after their name. The sources who agree with the author generally outnumber those who don't by a factor of five or six. Kolata's reporting faults were only a reflection of her own journalistic shortcomings, that would be bad enough. But to the extent that they reflect the attitudes of the Times as an institution, they suggest a Times policy toward coverage of controversial products of technology that is anti-environment, pro-corporate and fundamentalist in its approach to scientific inquiry. [In a story about AIDS and the fatal consequences of treatment with] Compound Q...Kolata consistently reported the deaths as a failure of research, attributing them to the drugs, even after being told by attending physicians that most of the subjects had died of unrelated or pre-existing causes. Twice...Delaney says, Kolata misrepresented his description of the research; he also claims that she repeatedly distorted his quotes. "And I spent hours with her, on the phone and in person," he says. Eventually Delaney wrote to Times editor Max Frankel to complain, making it clear that he would be pleased to see his letter in print. Neither the letter, nor a correction, ever appeared. "Good reporters want to get the story right," Delaney says. "Kolata wanted to get the story she wanted to get." The article concluded that "By allowing Kolata to continue reporting as she has, unchallenged by strong counterpoints and a strong editor, the New York Times is compromising its reputation as a balanced and reliable source of science news and commentary. When topics addressed by Times science reporters are literally matters of life and death, readers expect that journalistic practices will be held to the highest standards." For full story see http://past.thenation.com/issue/980706/0706DOWI.HTM Then There Is the Following Discussion, Which Can Be Found at http://nuance.dhs.org/lbo-talk/0004/3792.html Gina Bari-Kolata Subject: Gina Bari-Kolata From: John K. Taber Date: Thu Apr 20 2000 - 19:11:50 EDT "RE: Times flacks for Ikea" "....NYT science reporter Gina Kolata is a case in point. It is not that much that she cannot understand what she is reporting, but she deliberately does a hatchet job to make the story fit the NYT party line." "Kolata aroused my curiosity since she screwed up a couple of stories in Science in the late 70s. The worst as I remember was her misrepresentation of Katchyan's Result (so-called) as a breakthrough solution to the Traveling Salesman Problem. It took several months for the mathematicians and the computer scientists to get her overly dramatic "breakthru" reporting straightened out. "IMO, she reports science as if it were infotainment, whereas real science is kind of boring (to a lay audience), incremental work. "Perhaps her approach is what made her attractive to the NY Times." John K. Taber ---------------------- Gina Kolata's article for the Times on the Freed study was widely distributed and picked up by various news services as front page news. Yellow Journalism apparently is not quite dead at the Times. 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